1. This book refers to Germany’s variant of national health insurance as social health insurance (SHI) to distinguish it from single-payer government insurance. However, I will sometimes refer to Germany as having NHI because that is how it is commonly referred to in some of the literature. Japan has modeled its health care system on the German model of SHI (T. R. Reid, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care [New York: Penguin Books, 2010], chap. 6). Switzerland’s variant of NHI removes employers from financing and mandates all individuals to purchase coverage from a number of nonprofit insurers. The government subsidizes premiums for those on low incomes.
2. See Uwe E. Reinhardt, “The Swiss Health System: Regulated Competition without Managed Care,” Journal of the American Medical Association 292 (10) (September 8, 2004): 1227–1231; Reid, Healing of America, pp. 176–182.
3. Peter J. Katzenstein, Policy and Politics in West Germany: The Growth of a Semi-Sovereign State (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).
4. Kees van Kersbergen, Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State (London and New York: Routledge, 1995)
5. Susan Giaimo, Markets and Medicine: The Politics of Health Care Reform in Britain, Germany, and the United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 89–91.